Field
The present invention relates to a control method of a flow regulating valve of an oxidizing gas and a flow regulation device.
Related Art
In a fuel cell system including a fuel cell that generates electric power with supplies of a fuel gas and an oxidizing gas, various flow regulating valves are provided to adjust the valve-opening position of each conduit and thereby regulate the flow rate in a fuel gas supply system, as well as in an oxidizing gas supply system and an exhaust gas discharge system. A failure of the flow regulating valve affects the operation of the fuel cell. A proposed technique detects a failure of a flow regulating valve by taking advantage of the behavior of a voltage generated in a fuel cell that is related to the operation of the flow regulating valve (for example, JP 2006-269128A). This proposed technique obtains a behavior of voltage of the fuel cell in the normal valve-opening state of a purge valve, which is one type of the flow regulating valve, in an exhaust system and detects a failure of the purge valve when the actual behavior of voltage at the time of outputting a valve-opening instruction of the purge valve is different from the obtained behavior of voltage.